


alternatives

by Flora_Obsidian



Series: found families [13]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Multi, Rey Skywalker, i'm writing aus of my own fics this is what my life has come to
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-28
Updated: 2018-01-13
Packaged: 2018-12-20 18:47:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 11,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11926992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flora_Obsidian/pseuds/Flora_Obsidian
Summary: Every choice we make affects the future; the rest of our time is spent dwelling on what-ifs and might-have-beens.Short snippets and such detailing the ways that things might have occurred in the found families 'verse had one or two things turned out differently. All chapters are unrelated to one another (unless otherwise specified) and arenotcanon in the 'verse as it now stands.





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alternatively: 
> 
> Rey meets a pair of strangers on Jakku.

She's somewhere deep in the Wastelands, sweat-soaked and tired and sandy, when she feels it. A _presence_. Something strong and spreading and too-bright like Jakku's sun, and Rey nearly falls from the support strut she's resting on as she startles. The Force nudges her back into balance, but she draws her own presence in, curling it up tight inside of her-- she doesn't _know_ this presence. And nothing ever happens on Jakku, not really, and this is _different_ , and that means she needs to be careful.

“Grandpa, if you're around...” she says to the empty air, before crawling the rest of the way across the chasm beneath her to the hallway ahead. The Star Destroyer has been gutted by wildlife and all the scavengers who came before her, but she's scoped this one out before. Learned how to hack into the Imperial circuits, opening up previously blocked rooms and corridors. If she's lucky, this hall will lead her right to the control room.

The ghost of her grandfather doesn't answer, which is-- well, she's used to it. He has to leave from time to time. She understands. But she doesn't know what that _presence_ is, and it just keeps spreading the longer she works in tense, uncomfortable silence-- her leg still aches and throbs from an injury sustained a couple months back, and her attention is split between finding what parts are worth taking and hiding her mind, and though she's inside, in the shade, the ships in the Graveyard are like ovens in the heat. She's baking slowly.

The _presence_ spreads and spreads, like it's looking for something. Rey thinks about what her grandfather has told her of her family, her cousin, and doesn't dare nudge back with a presence of her own, approach it to see what it wants.

She finds enough scrap to last her for a few days-- parts in good condition, circuit boards, paneling. She caves, breaking routine to sit on the frontal viewport in the control room to drink the last of her water, the drop beneath her to the sands below dizzying (the Destroyer crashed on its side, decades ago, and she's made her way to the top of it with the floor and ceiling acting as walls).

She leaves the way she came, the heat of the sun little better than the heat of the ship behind her. She piles her scrap into the side of her speeder, clambers into the pilot's seat with a grunt, and makes her way to Nema Outpost.

The _presence_ is stronger here. Nearly overwhelming in its proximity. But she needs water, needs food. Plutt closes shop after a certain time of day.

Rey ducks underneath the canvas canopy to begin scouring the grit and sand caked into her prizes; the shade does little to shield from the searing wind or the heat, much as the shade of the Destroyers themselves. Her lips are cracked and dry. She's fallen behind since her injury and she doesn't have any water stored away; she aches. The next time her grandfather tells her to steal a ship and get off this planet, she's going to listen to him, she really will.

Speaking of her grandfather, he hasn't shown up yet. The _presence_ is growing in ebbs and flows. Rey keeps her head down and works.

“--looking for word of a couple. Sey and Bela.” It's a man's voice, nearby. The _presence_ is so strong that it wants to blind her, making the edges of her vision go fuzzy simply by her sheer proximity to it, making the hairs on her arms stand up straight even though she isn't cold at all, making _something_ go tense and alert in the back of her mind.

“Can't give you information if you don't pay.” The rasp of a trader. Ytal; she recognizes their accent. Greedy bastard.

“Oh, kriff off,” says another. Blyka. Rey traded a square meter of plating to her for a pair of shoes. “You've been 'round less than a decade, no way in hell you'd've met those two. C'mere, offworlder. Information, for a price-- reasonable price.”

The _presence_ flutters, reaching out, out, out-- Rey keeps her head down, careful not to scratch up the circuitry as she works to remove all the grit caked into it. It needs to _work_ for her to trade it in.

“What sort of 'reasonable' price?” asks a woman. Rey frowns. The accent is like her grandmother's. High class. This is _Jakku_ ; high class means you have a house of your own, nothing more.

“I'd like that fancy thing at your waist there, not that you'd ever hand it over.” Blyka cackles. “I'll take the blaster, instead, we can call it even.”

A pause, presumably in which either the man or the woman hands over their blaster and Rey panics. The _presence_ doesn't notice, but it's only a matter of time. No one has blasters on Jakku, and the two are either very desperate or very stupid to just hand one over-- or perhaps they simply have blasters in abundance. And the _fancy thing_ \-- well-- Rey knows her grandfather's stories by heart. It makes sense that the _presence_ would also have a lightsaber on hand.

If she runs, they'll notice. And she needs water.

“Sey and Bela,” the man prompts when the silence stretches on for too long.

Blyka tuts. “Dead.”

The _presence_ runs cold as ice. Rey stifles a sharp gasp.

“Came into town one day, on the cusp of a sandstorm, eleven years ago, give or take a few cycles. Told 'em they should just bunk down here, but they insisted on trying to make it back.”

The man says nothing; the _presence_ runs colder still; the woman speaks in the man's place, so quiet that Rey has to struggle to hear it over the surrounding talk and chatter.

“Was there anybody with them?”

“With 'em? You're asking an awful lot of questions, kid.”

“ _Was there anybody with them?_ A little girl. Five years old, then.”

“...No. Never had kids, those two. 'Fraid that's all I got, unless you wanna try their homestead. Can't imagine you'd find anything there, though.”

“Thank you for your time,” the woman answers, in a tone cold enough to match the sudden churning cold of the _presence_. Rey's hands are shaking too badly for her to work; the desert air does nothing to warm the chill which seems to have settled inside of her.

The _presence_ distances itself. Not far, but it leaves Nema, and that's enough.

It leaves Nema in the direction of the stranger's house.

_A little girl. Five years old, then._

She trades in her circuit board and a section of paneling for only a single portion and doesn't even protest, too frightened to breathe until she's safe inside her shelter once again.

* * *

Rey tries to think. It's hard; she's split between thinking and panicking and running.

There are two people looking for her. A man and a woman. With a _presence_ in the Force so strong it knocks her off-balance. They could be someone sent by her cousin-- she knows that's part of why she's here, because Mama and Papa wanted her to be safe. But they _could be_ \-- they could be--

Does she reveal herself? Does she stay safe, let them leave none the wiser? Does she try to get close enough to see them, to know for sure?

The _presence_ is moving. Searching. Looking for her. For _her_.

She isn't scared of a lot, but she finds herself petrified.

“Where _are_ you, Grandpa?” she demands of thin air. Her grandfather doesn't answer. The inside of her shelter remains dark.

* * *

In the end, the _presence_ moves into the Graveyard, and Rey isn't left with much of a choice. She can't know for sure, but it feels like it's following her, going to the places it knows she's been like she's left a trail behind her in the shifting sands. Perhaps she has. Grandpa says that Jedi leave a Force signature in their wake, and other Force-sensitives can tell if they've been somewhere recently. She isn't a Jedi, but she _does_ have the Force. And so does the _presence_.

It moves into the Graveyard, moves closer and closer towards her shelter-- a fallen Imperial Walker in a sea of other Imperial Walkers, but it's going to be able to tell the difference. It will know if she runs.

It doesn't _feel_ dark. Not in the way she's imagined that her cousin would be, or those like him. Like her grandfather once was. But she can't imagine another outcome, another possibility. So she packs away everything she can into her speeder if she needs to make a getaway-- her food, water rations, her doll, her helmet, the scrap she has yet to trade in. Her quarterstaff stays in her hands. She moves the speeder into the shadow of the Walker and hides behind the crest of a dune.

_If I don't see you again, Grandpa--_

The man and the woman are walking side by side; Rey can actually look at them, now, see their traveling clothes, too nice to be inconspicuous, both of them short in stature. Older, brown hair streaked with gray, no hoods. Something twists sharp and painful in her chest, makes her eyes burn, and she doesn't know _why_.

The man and the woman and the _presence_ approach the Walker in a solemn silence, stoop to crawl in through the hatch. Rey can shut them in, if she wants to-- she doesn't _see_ a lightsaber at the man's waist. But she doesn't move. Hardly breathes. _They're in her home_.

The _presence_ isn't dark, it doesn't _feel_ dark-- it feels-- taught. Tense. Larger than anything she's ever felt before. But something about it is inexplicably tranquil in a way she cannot understand-- tranquil, perhaps, like the blue of the sky before a sandstorm rolls across the horizon?

There's a noise; the _presence--_ thrashes, for want of a better word. The man darts out of the Walker like something inside of it is chasing him, and she can hear his words: “I'm sorry-- _I'm so sorry_ \--”

“She's been here recently, Luke,” says the woman, but she sounds shaken as she follows the man out. “We both felt it. She's still alive.”

“She was _counting the days_ ,” the man replies in a voice that all but breaks Rey's heart. Or maybe it's the realization she has when she hears his name. Her cheeks are wet, regardless.

_Grandpa, Grandma. They came back._

Papa, of course, is someone different than the Luke Skywalker of legends. And her auntie is a different woman than Leia Organa. Papa is warm hands and gentle laughter and eyes like the desert sky; Auntie Leia is poise and grace and strength. _Skywalker_ and _Organa_ are just... stories.

_They came back._

And so the people in front of her are more strangers than the scavengers she passes by in Nema, than the offworlders who land and leave within a day. But at the same time, they're family. And Rey...

Rey is tired, and thirsty, and so very lonely.

She slides down the dune and into the light of the setting sun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Leia succeeded in finding Luke and dragged him out of his self-imposed exile. Luke said they needed to go to Jakku because that was where the family he left Rey with is staying. What they find upon arriving is... not what they expected, to say the least.
> 
> Thank you all for indulging me as I write AUs of my AUs -- I hope you're enjoying it at least partially as much as I am. Comments and kudos are, as always, much appreciated.
> 
> For more writerly-related types of things, come find me on Tumblr @floraobsidian


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alternatively:
> 
> Han Solo and Chewbacca climb aboard the Falcon, and after they get away from whatever creatures he was smuggling and whichever groups he had managed to piss off and make the leap to hyperspace from inside another ship's hanger, and after she bypasses the compressor so they don't explode into tiny pieces, she actually looks at them both and feels very, very small.

There are children aboard his ship – tough kids, strong and capable, put kids, not much older than Ben was Han last saw--

\--but it doesn't do to think about that kind of stuff. He's good at running. He's been running for fifteen years.

The kids settle in after the mess with the rathtars and the chaos of Kanjiklub, shaken but otherwise unharmed. Han feels like he's getting too old for this kind of bantha fodder; the boy, Finn, passes out in one of the _Falcon's_ bunks with an ease he wishes he still had. But the girl stays strapped into the copilot seat, staring at the blurred stars with something almost like rapture, wide eyes in a too-thin face, hollows around them, and sinking in her cheeks. It's the same position she was in when he left almost an hour ago to check on Chewie, talking with him; it's almost a mirror of the way that Luke sat, once, a lifetime ago, with the same expression and those same wide eyes--

\--no.

“Careful,” he says, sitting down, and the girl startles. Force, but she can't be any more than eighteen. Nineteen, maybe. She looks younger, if one can ignore the tenseness of her frame and the tiredness that sometimes leaks in, but that's likely from how _small_ she is. Not in height, and not in strength, but scavengers aren't in a position to eat well and eat often. “Can make you feel sick, staring at them for too long.”

The girl jumps slightly when he speaks, hand curling around her quarterstaff, but she only glances over for a moment to check that it's him, and then she's right back to staring. Han finds his lips quirking up in a reluctant smile. “I could never get sick of this.”

“ _Sick of_ and _hurling up your guts from spacesickness_ are two entirely different things, kid.”

Something twitches in her expression-- he's good at reading people. Or, he used to be. He hadn't been able to read the changes in his own son, or--

\--no.

But her face does something odd, a flash of hurt (?) quickly and almost completely masked. The emotion – grief? – doesn't fade from her eyes. She's all sharp edges and grit, and there's sand at her feet from where the grains have shaken loose from her clothing.

He settles into the pilot seat, looks out through the viewport. They've a long trip ahead of them to Takodana, and multiple stops along the way to shake off any tails. And there are children on his ship. Haven't been children on his ship since--

\--no.

And it'd make sense to get to know them.

“What's your name, kid?” he asks. He knows the boy's name, but hers is something lost in the haste of the most recent series of chaotic events that is somehow still his life, even if it should have killed him a few dozen times over. Or maybe she never even said it outright-- the boy might have, once or twice, but Han's attention was, understandably, otherwise occupied.

Her face does the thing it did before again. Hurt. Grief. Her hand is still curled around her quarterstaff, knuckles white.

“...I'm Rey,” she finally answers, hesitant, and it's like the world around him blurs out of focus, like the stars in the void before them, all still present but impossible to understand or distinguish, because--

Because--

 _Ben_ \--

\--no.

“How'd you wind up on Jakku, Rey?” he hears himself asking, and a distant part of him notes the way that she closes off even more--

Because--

\--but she _can't_ be. Ben had--

\--no.

 _Yes_ , the air seems to whisper.

“How did... where the _hell_ was your father?”

Something shifts, and cracks, and shatters.

He can see her parents in her, Mara's eyes, and her grandmother's dark hair-- her _hair_ , and he'd practiced Alderaanian braids with his little niece because she thought they looked pretty-- the same three buns she always insisted her mother do. Gray clothes, suitable for the desert, but her favorite dress had been gray and white like that, too.

“ _You remember_ ,” she whispers, and her voice is something terrible, something _broken_ , and she doesn't crush away the grief this time. His heart breaks, too, just a little more.

“Kid-- _Rey_ \--” Does he reach out? Hold back?

He'd thought he wasn't fit to be a parent when Ben was born and he was _right_ \--

“We saw you just as much as your parents did. Leia-- Leia and I-- we thought you died. We thought you _died_.”

Luke, arriving with Artoo and the fragment of a map if they ever needed him, and the other portion was going with someone he trusted; Luke, _alone_ , hollow-eyed and haunted and so very _old_.

Luke, alone. And Leia, too, when Han stormed out, too filled with shame to ever come back.

“I don't-- there was a family, a stranger, and his wife, and they said-- they'd take care of me-- said they'd be back. They said they'd come back. I _begged_ him to come back.” Her voice is still that terrible, broken thing, and the stars reflect in the wet sheen in her eyes, not yet spilling down her cheeks. “Grandpa. He raised me. And Grandma. Their ghosts, taught me. And I waited. If he ever came back. I had to be there.”

Han dismisses the mention of Force ghosts to process later; he tucks away his anger somewhere deep, deep inside to explode on a later day; he pushes out everything but the knowledge that his niece is alive and alone and scared and powers up the _Falcon's_ nav to start plotting a new course.

“We're going to Leia. On D'Qar, where the Resistance is.” His own voice is rough, and he can't speak past a lump on his throat, and there's something blurry in his own vision. “It's-- it's green. You'll like it.” Like Luke, on Yavin IV the first time he saw it, utterly starstruck.  _There's so much **water** , Han-- not even the Hutts own this much in their stores!_

“I don't know him.” She's trying to get herself under control, _trying_ , but she shakes in the process. Sand, spilling out between the fingers of a clenched fist. “They told stories, about-- about Luke Skywalker, and all of you, but that's not. I just remember that Papa was-- was-- he smiled. And Mama had red hair. But I don't. I _don't_.”

He doesn't know what to say; Han is only sort-of okay with emotions when it comes to a few select people, and his long-lost niece in sand-worn clothes, speaking in that terrible, broken voice, is far from what he knows how to handle. Rey shakes in the copilot's seat. He's scared-- if he reaches out to comfort her, will she run? Frightened beings often do, and he isn't sure which of them is the most afraid.

“Can you. Tell me? About them?” Her fingers are curled tight around her quarterstaff, around the arm of the chair, like it's the only thing keeping her grounded.

_Can you tell me about them?_

Something tells him that any stories of Luke her grandfather could have shared weren't very pleasant ones.

“Snarky, dramatic little shit, your dad,” he says at last, thinking of times before it all went wrong, and it startles Rey into a watery smile. “Good heart, though. Had it in him to forgive... well, to forgive anything. But he wouldn't bend on what he believed in, what he felt was important.” _Not until_ \--

\--no.

“It's part of why he fit so well with your mom, really. Unstoppable, the both of them.”

“Mama... she was... she was Dark. And then she met Papa?”

“Her last order from the Emperor was to kill Luke. Then she met him, and he did that damned thing he always does that makes everyone want to be friends with him, and then they fell in love. Well. Little bit more to it, but that's a good summary.” He thinks about Weymouth and clones and Thrawn and everything that happened between, and everything that happened after. “They were thrilled when they found out they were gonna have you. Scared. But they were so _happy_.” His own throat threatens to close up. “We were all happy.”

“...Even my cousin?” she asks, and it's like a blow to the chest, all the air knocked out of him and pain beyond belief. All the emotions he'd been running from catching up to him at once.

His _son_ , who had his mother's eyes and his mother's hair and his father's love of flying and a cheeky little grin and--

\--no.

...Yes.

_Mom, Dad, this way, but you gotta be **quiet** , Auntie Mara and the baby are **sleeping** , okay?_

“Yeah. Even-- even him.”

* * *

Han suggests the two kids use the 'fresher before they make the jump out of hyperspace. The boy, Finn, goes first, in and out in a ridiculously short amount of time that makes Han think he's a soldier. Rey takes longer, much longer, but--

\--well, Han makes a point of _avoiding_ backwaters like Jakku, but it's not hard to put two and two together. A scavenger on a desert planet doesn't have easy access to drinking water, much less enough of it to shower on the regular. She looks small when she reenters the cockpit, settling into the copilot's seat, hair in damp tendrils down her back, framing her too-thin face. Still staring at the blurred stars, she takes thin strips of fabric from her wrist and starts to tie her hair back, not even needing to look, like it's instinct, or second nature-- or just habit of fifteen years, as she ties off three buns in a few short minutes.

He brings them out of hyperspace above D'Qar, watches Rey's eyes go wide as saucers as she sees the green, the blue, the wisps of cloud swirling above it all, and maybe he takes a slower landing route than he otherwise would, but that's fine. Luke's been gone for fifteen damned years; he can wait a few more minutes.

Finn looks awed, too, which Han makes note of even with most of his attention on flying, and on Rey. She's still too young, too small, too thin, but she looks less brittle after their talk, and after her shower. Less likely to fall apart. Her voice is soft when she speaks, but nothing of that terrible, terrible brokenness of before.

“I didn't know there was this much green in the whole galaxy.”

“We'll make sure you get to see plenty of it,” he answers, and she smiles very slightly. Han counts it as a win.

They go in to land.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one goes out to AO3 user KnitKait, who nudged me into going back through my drafts and finding something close enough to finished that I could polish up and post.
> 
> As always, thank you all for reading, and comments and kudos are ever-appreciated <3 For more writerly-related shenanigans, come find me on Tumblr @floraobsidian


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> alternatively:
> 
> Luke takes Rey and runs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I made myself emotional writing this, so. That happened.

Luke isn't in a good place to do... well. To do anything. At all.

And maybe it's cruel to his daughter, and maybe he's selfish, but he can't lose another. He can't. He _can't_. And he flees before he can retrieve his wife's body, can only snatch her lightsaber away before Ben-- _Kylo_ \-- Ben--? can scoop it off the ground and further his obsession with the man who was once Darth Vader, and he grabs his daughter by the hand so tight that he finds bruises around her fragile little wrist the next morning and can barely bring himself to move for a day and a night, and he _runs_.

Leia gets part of a map, and Artoo, he leaves before he can drown in the emptiness in her eyes, dark and cavernous and gaping, an open wound. And part of the map goes to someone he trusts. And he keeps running.

And he runs.

And he runs.

And he runs.

* * *

Rey normally likes adventures, but this one isn't fun at all.

The planet that they're on is green, like their old home, and the sky is blue, like her old home, and there's lots and lots and _lots_ of water. She's never seen this much water in her _life_. It stretches all around the little island, way way way far away so it touches the sky at the end, and there's nothing else but the islands and them. And that's really cool.

But the adventure isn't fun. Because she remembers that Mama wasn't on the ship with them, and how tight Papa had grabbed her arm, and her cousin telling her to hide, and the pain in the air so strong it made her _hair_ hurt. Because she remembers a lot of fire, and people lying on the ground in strange ways and not moving at _all_. And every time she asks if Mama is coming back, or why her cousin told her to hide, or why can't they go and visit Auntie Leia or Uncle Han, Papa just closes his eyes and goes very still.

Adventures aren't fun when she's alone. And Papa is with her, in this little hut so different than their old home, but he isn't _here_. And that makes Rey scared.

 _Mama?_ she calls to the night, with the Force, like Papa and Mama had always taught her to do. Papa is normally so calm, but he just feels sad, now. Mama... isn't. _Mama, come back!_

_Come back!_

* * *

Rey is six years old.

She keeps track of the days that they've been here using the little calendar built into her Papa's shuttle's dashboard. She's eaten all of the sweets in the drawer in the shuttle, too, to see if Papa would scold her like he normally did, but he didn't-- the sweets were tasty while she had them, but her stomach feels all funny now. She makes tea from the fancy set that Auntie Leia had bought for her as a birthday present and sits down with Mr. Dollie, since Papa hasn't left his room today. She doesn't _like_ tea, not really, but Mama does, and Papa sometimes makes a special tea from his home, and Auntie Leia likes tea, too, so Rey settles down with it.

“Do you want some tea, Mr. Dollie?” she asks, pushing one of the little cups across the table. “I think we have sweetener for it, somewhere, but Mama says that sweetener just makes your teeth all rotten.”

The doll seems more cheerful. Rey grins at him and chatters on.

* * *

“Rey.”

Her Papa's voice sounds funny. Like when she has a cold, and her throat gets all scratchy and nasty and clogged up. He looks sick, Papa; he's very very pale, and very very tired, and there are scary dark smudges under his eyes. He doesn't...

He doesn't look like Papa, really. But she doesn't feel like Rey when she's sick, so maybe Papa doesn't _look_ like Papa when Papa is sick.

“Papa?” she asks. “Are you okay, Papa? Do you want tea?”

His face does something funny, then, too. But not really funny. Funny in the way that it isn't normal, and it's so far away from normal that it makes Rey want to giggle, except something twisting and icky in her stomach tells her that it isn't funny at all.

“I... need to talk. Talk to you. About your mother, Rey.”

* * *

Rey is ten years old, and she and Papa have been on Ach-To for one thousand, seven-hundred, and twenty-five days going by the shuttle's calendar. She's counted. Papa teaches her how to fix things, and how to meditate, and how to hide herself in the Force. Papa tells her stories about times before the Rebellion, and before... _before_. When they were all happy.

She _is_ happy here, with Papa, she really is, but... it's very lonely. Papa is very very sad. But they have tea sometimes, and Papa shows her how to make the special tea from his home, and fix the generators that give them heat and light, and how to cook some things for herself.

“Sometimes... sometimes, Rey.” His face is still not-right. Rey thinks her Papa is very sick, and it's going to take him a long time to get better. It's been four years already, after all. “Sometimes, people get hurt. You understand? But not always from falling down and scraping their knees, or breaking a bone. Sometimes. Sometimes it's here.” And he taps her chest with the finger of his shiny hand. “And here.” And he taps the side of her head, very very gentle. Rey frowns as she tries to puzzle it out. “And people. People can't. Their thoughts are all wrong. And they're very sad, and it's hard to think past being sad. And it's hard to do things, like get up out of bed. Or make food.”

She looks at her Papa's face. Feels the Force like sticky syrup around her. “Are you sad, Papa?”

“...Yes, Rey.” His voice is just a little whisper, hard to hear. Rey feels her chest do something odd, and her eyes get all hot and blurry, and she throws her arms around his neck in a hug.

“I love you, Papa,” because she isn't sure what else she's supposed to say when her Papa looks like he's about to cry, too. And he doesn't say anything back, and she thinks her shoulder feels damp when it shouldn't, but he holds her tight. And that's good enough for Rey.

* * *

 _“There's a rainstorm coming,”_ Grandpa says, and he sounds absolutely gleeful.

Rey grins at him with a gap-toothed smile; she lost a tooth a week ago, and she can feel the new tooth poking out of her gums. “Papa says that he isn't going to come with us for this one, but I told him we'd bring back all the pretty rocks we could find.”

_“If you brought back all the pretty rocks you saw, you'd fill the whole house, Rey.”_

Grandpa is nice. He keeps her company when Papa isn't doing as well – and he's doing better, now, but he still has bad days. And that's okay. Rey understands.

Ach-To has lots and lots of rainstorms. More than Yavin IV ever had. The currents do things that she doesn't fully understand and wash smooth, sparkling rocks up onto the shoreline by the ocean, and because the storms are very often short, she can run out and play in the puddles and then go searching for rocks once it passes without having to go back inside. Papa likes the storms, too, because he grew up on a desert planet and they never ever ever had rain. But Papa doesn't always go with her during the rainstorms, and that's okay.

“I wouldn't fill up the _whole_ house,” she protests, “maybe just a couple of rooms.”

Grandpa throws back his head and laughs. _“Come on, kiddo, we don't want to keep your grandmother waiting.”_

She finds rocks as clear as glass that don't scratch even when she drops them, trying to carry too many at once, and one that looks like fire when she holds it up to the light, and for some reason she thinks of music when she sees it. She takes that one to bring home to Papa specifically, and two pale blue ones like the sky for her grandparents. One like a marble for if she ever sees Auntie Leia again, all swirls of blue and white, and one that looks gray in her palm but shines with flecks of gold for her Uncle Han.

Grandma smiles, pale and blue herself, and Grandpa looks between them fondly, and Rey, soaked to the skin but happy all the same, smiles back at her.

* * *

Rey is nineteen, and she knows a lot of things.

She knows how to fix things. The generators Papa brought with them when they arrived so, so many years ago need to be repaired a lot, and sometimes, for lack of better things to do, the two of them tinker in silence in the shuttle.

She knows how to cook. Papa still has bad days, but he smiles at her, and Rey smiles at him, and the vast tranquility in the Force around her, like the sky before a storm, is only sometimes overcast and cloudy. But Rey will make food for both of them, sometimes, just because she feels like it, and not because Papa can't anymore.

She knows how to fly. And she knows why they don't fly away – Papa explained, about the First Order, and her cousin, and the people who would hurt them. They've argued before, because Rey can't imagine leaving Auntie Leia behind, and the arguments are heated and bitter and terrible. She hates them. But in the end, all they have is each other, and Rey can't leave her father behind, not when he would never do the same to her.

She knows the Force, in theory and in practice, and she knows that if her cousin ever does find them-- she might not win, because Mama didn't win, but just like Mama, she might be able to buy time for someone else.

She knows how to fight, with a quarterstaff, with a lightsaber.

She knows where the best beaches are to find pretty rocks.

And she knows that, one day, she and her Papa will need to fly away from this place, though not when that day is. The Force whispers patience into her ears, calms her when her blood is hot and racing after a particularly vicious argument, lulls her to sleep with thoughts of the ocean waves crashing against the rocky cliffs when she finds it hard to settle her mind.

* * *

It's one of Papa's worse days, because it's fifteen years to the day since they came here.

It also rained, early in the morning, so Rey is scaling the cliffs down to the beaches to collect more stones, and to catch fish for dinner. When she sees a shuttle-trail in the sky, and she feels no warning in the Force, only a gentle and soothing calm, she diverts her path down to the plains. She and Papa moved into the old temples, careful not to disturb the ancestral halls but needing shelter all the same, making friends with the old temple guardians, such silly little creatures-- but that's where they first landed, when they first came here. That's the only place to land on the island.

There are people, light and wild in the Force itself, but presences she still does not know. She slows, creeps around rocks, tucks her own light in around herself and holds it close. Looks down from a hidden vantage point.

It's a familiar ship, vaguely circular and flat like a pancake; it's familiar people, in part, two old faces who make her heart clench in her chest-- because she doesn't _remember_ them, not really, but Papa has holos stashed away. A Wookie, fur graying. Two more, young men, her age. A stout little droid, blue and white, and a tall thin droid, shiny and gold.

 _Papa_ , she calls to the air, and her father stirs faintly, still mostly lost in his own thoughts. _Papa, they've come and found us._

He doesn't answer, still distant, and she repeats herself with greater urgency-- _Papa, our family has come back for us._

And then, far more hesitant, wary, hopeful-yet-frightened, she lets her light slip out around her and comes away from her hiding place, out into plain view, scurrying down the rest of the grassy, rocky slopes and stopping at the edge of the plains, seeing Han go a little bit wobbly and Leia smile something pained and broken and inexplicably _happy_ all at the same time--

“I thought this was a map to Skywalker,” says one of the men. He's wearing a pilot's jacket. There's a third droid peeking around from his ankles that Rey hadn't seen before, orange and white and round.

_Rey.....?_

Her father's voice in the back of her mind, in all the air around her. The Force is like a heavy blanket on his worse days, even with how firmly Ach-To seems to be grounded in the Light, and she feels cold as the connection between them opens up. Cold and tired and lost. An echo back from the other side.

_They're **here** , Papa._

“Papa said he left a map,” she replies to the man. Her Papa is gathering himself, somewhere, making an effort-- and she knows how hard it can be, some days, but she knows that her Papa will do anything for family. He does for her.

Both of the strangers stare; Chewbacca sweeps her up in a hug, heedless of the yelp of surprise she makes, swings her around in several circles before putting her down. Han is wet-eyed, and Leia can only look at her with an age she's only ever seen on Papa's face.

But then again, she's only ever seen Papa and her grandparents for a very long time. This is a half dozen people in one space in one _day_.

“Hello, Rey," her aunt says in little more than a whisper.

"Hi," Rey says with a hesitant smile. "You're looking for Papa, right? Home is this way, I can show you."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poe gets captured; Finn rescues Poe; Finn and Poe make it to the Resistance instead of being shot down. How'd they get the Falcon back? Heck if I know. The Hosnian system has yet to be destroyed. Mara is alive and somewhere, someday, further reunions are to be had.


	4. Chapter 4

He approaches the settlement hesitantly; it reminds him much of Mos Eisley, though significantly smaller and somehow even less reputable-- all the crime of the old spaceport concentrated into Tosche Station. He knows by the glances that he gets pegged as an offworlder the moment its inhabitants catch sight of him. Then again, he suspects that lots of offworlders come through here looking for information, which is exactly what he intends to do-- and they, surely, are looking for profit.

He thought he'd had the coordinates for Sey and Bela's homestead, but he found nothing save for dunes of sand, and Lor San Tekka, with his portion of the map, is part of a nomadic group; Luke knows that he will only be able to find information in this place. He needs to see his friends. He needs to see _Rey_. The Force is urgent around him, and for the first time in a long time, his mind feels a little bit clearer; the dark clouds still loom around the edges, but this upswing has lasted long enough for him to make the choice to _leave_ , to fly off of Ach-To and do what he should have done years and years before.

When there, he starts towards what looks like the equivalent of the center of town; Nima Outpost can hardly be called a _town_ , of course, much in the same way that Tosche Station can hardly be called a bustling social hub, but each is what passes as such on their respective planets. There are more people in this direction, and more canvas awnings over shops of mostly junk, barterers and traders and the like. There's a building, as well, larger than the rest and far more sturdy, made of corrugated durasteel plating rather than patched-up scrap and with a long line of various species approaching the window at the front. Some kind of commotion, too.

Excellent.

Luke pulls his cloak closer around himself and moves forward to get a better look, straining his ears to try and understand what's happening; those in the line seem agitated, both in body language and in Force presence, at the scene unfolding before them, a small figure confronting the obese alien at the window, blood down the side of their leg and a white-knuckled grip on their quarterstaff. His lips turn downward; the figure's voice is hoarse and weak and _small_ , and the alien at the window doesn't seem especially sympathetic.

Desert planets are so often unforgiving.

“Two portions,” he says gruffly, and the line shifts some more. Someone near the back takes a half-step forward as if to interfere before being roughly jerked back with a firm grip and a shake of the head.

“ _I'm_ your _best_ scavenger,” the figure rasps out, gripping tight to their staff with both hands, painfully young. They sway, unsteady, the one leg seemingly unable to support them. He knows exhaustion when he sees it, knows blood loss, knows dehydration. And he knows strength. The little being doesn't back away. “You know it. _I_ know it. S' in-- in _your_ int'rests-- keep me alive. _Ten_.”

The alien takes the sack in front of him, metal clanking heavily. Luke brushes over the minds around him, light as a feather, a cursory check; the alien's thoughts are disdain for both the _scavenger-girl_ and for everyone else in the line; the rest recognize the unfairness, but the parts of them dedicated to survival know that if the girl stops taking all the best scrap there's going to be more for them-- and the girl jerks at the first touch of mind to mind, and Luke withdraws. He frowns.

Why does--?

The alien comes back with a much lighter sack and shoves it off the counter, onto the ground. The girl swears in Huttese though the planet is far from Hutt space, and though he could pass it off as a trick of the light, the strap seems to fly up into her hand before her fingers brush the fabric; the Force hums in the air. She lurch-stumble-falls away from the window and the alien with a brimming anger in her thoughts, overshadowed mostly by pain and how close she is to collapse; Luke nearly collapses himself, watching as she pauses to lean against a crate, gray-faced and trembling, and he can see himself in her, and Mara, too-- too-thin, but he was always slight and small, and her eyes are like Mara's, and she has her grandmother's hair, brown and curled and sloppily pulled back into three buns the way it always used to be as a child.

He can see her face.

 _Rey_ \--

* * *

The man who says he is Luke Skywalker might just be another fever dream, but he's crying, and she's too tired to cry, and even if it _is_ a fever dream, it's the most realistic one she's ever had. The man who says he is Luke Skywalker helps her back to her speeder, and he flies with her back to her house, and he rests his forehead against the one hundred marks etched into the wall of her AT-AT while she crawls into her hammock and forces herself to eat a full portion of S-ration even though she knows her supplies are running out. She's hurt, now, she needs it more.

“The family you were with--” he finally says into the silence, sounding like he might shatter if he keeps trying to speak yet trying anyway. Rey blinks once. Hallucinations are supposed to go away if you ignore them, aren't they?

The man who says he is Luke Skywalker takes one breath, and then another, shaky and slow. Rey blinks a second time and looks at him. He's very pale.

The family...? Does he mean the stranger and his wife? He must. Strange fever dream. _She_ knows the answer, and _he's_ in her head (?), so _he_ knows the answer, too...

But is it a dream at all?

“Sandstorm,” she rasps out.

“But you stayed there until-- until--”

“Hundred,” she says, slurring the word, flapping one hand at the wall.

There is silence.

The man who says he is Luke Skywalker takes her hand, and she's too tired to flinch in surprise. She wishes Grandma or Grandpa were here; they always tell her when she's starting to see things from the heat.

“You can come home, Rey, if you'll have me.”

Her leg burns. There is blood in her hammock and sand in her mouth.

She is so very, very tired.

“Home,” she echoes weakly, and nods.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> alternatively:
> 
> She climbs.
> 
> (Rey travels to Ach-To in search of her father.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is basically catharsis for TLJ -- there aren't any spoilers here, however.
> 
> That being said, it's not exactly a happy chapter, and might be a little disjointed. I have a lot of emotions rn.

She climbs.

She cannot _really_ feel her father, and that is the worst part of the climb. She remembers a vast kind of tranquility wrapped around her like a blanket, like the oceans when calm, or the cloudless night sky scattered with stars like spilled glitter. What she finds now is emptiness, vast and gaping and cold, her loneliest nights on Jakku-- like he's tried to cut himself off as much as possible from what makes him whole. He can't, not really, not when the Force runs in their shared blood, runs in everything that lives, that dies, that is and was and will be, and the result is a sinkhole, a depression, the Force flooding in and nothing running out. It hurts to go near it.

She climbs, the Force tight around her like a cloak, her own presence dimmed. If her father knows she is here, fine, but she had no warning he would leave, so he will have no warning that she will come.It's petty, perhaps. But she's upset. She has every right to be petty. She's _here_ , coming to retrieve him instead of Leia or Han or anybody else.

She's here for him because he was never there for her. She has every right to be petty. She has every right to be _furious_.

She climbs. She climbs, and she climbs, and she climbs; she sees glimpses of civilization, places just the right size for one person to pass the day away in, worn down from use; she sees paths walked into the grass and rocky hills.

She finds him, and she is _burning_ , except she feels that heaviness all around her now. It's so empty. So _old_. It tempers some of the flame.

He turns, slow; he pulls his hood from his face like he can't believe the scene before him. She doesn't know if he recognizes her. She doesn't recognize _him_ , not really-- his eyes are the same blue as her Papa's, but Papa was never so tired. Papa was never so painfully old.

She holds out the saber.

It's begging, in a sense, because she is desperate, she has always been desperate, scavenging everything she can find just to stay alive. But it's also a demand.

This is the legacy their family shares. It is his, just as much as it is hers, as it is Leia's.

His voice is soft, when he speaks. The wind catches the words and tries to snatch them away before she can hear them. “I can't. I'm sorry. I _can't_.”

It is a _demand_. She steps forward, lightsaber still in one outstretched hand.

“Come back.”

“Rey.” _He knows, he knows, he knows he knows heknowsheknowshe_ _ **knows**_ _\--_ “It's... better. For everyone. I--”

“Come back.” Her voice isn't trembling. She isn't going to cry. It isn't. She _isn't_.

“Some things are better left alone, Rey.”

And the endless desert sands--

He pushes her arm down; she's too busy trying to process his denial that she isn't even shocked at his touch. The first time in nearly fifteen years that she has seen her father's face.

_Wait, no--_

“This is one of them. That saber brings nothing but pain.”

_Come back!_

_**Papa!** _

Nights spent alone, frightened, the howling of the wind and sand through the thin plating of her shelter--

“It is... better... if--”

“ _No.”_

She could open her mind to him, could shove all her pain and fright at him through the Force, could dredge up those old memories, too-hungry too-thirsty too-frightened, Unkar Plutt's sneering face, the way the world seemed to go hazy and dim as her blood trickled down the sandy dune beneath her--

\--and he would _know_ , then. But she knows what it feels like to have something in your head that isn't of your own making, and she is not Kylo Ren. She refuses.

But she _burns_.

“If you won't come back for me, come back for your sister,” she spits, grabbing his hand and shoving the saber into it, holding his gaze and not backing down. He tries to pull away, and she does not let him. Nearly fifteen years hardened by the desert sands, she has nothing left to lose at this point, not anymore, nothing but that vague childhood hope that her family would come home – and isn't she, standing here now, come to him instead of the other way around, in direct opposition of that hope? He stares at her, blue eyes like the ocean, like the sky, so impossibly tired. “Come back for your brother-in-law. If you don't want to fight, don't-- if you don't want to train me, _don't_. If you don't want to come back for me, it won't be any different than the last _decade_ of my life. But the Republic is _gone_. Your sister misses you, _needs_ you. Your brother-in-law. Your _friends_. If you won't come back for me, at least come back for them!”

There is nothing but silence for a long few moments. The winds catch at her hair and her clothes, biting at her skin. She does not back down. He _will_ come back-- if not for her, fine. _Fine_. But she remembers Leia, _I was so stupid to think that I could have found him_ , and how small she is to stand between them and a universe bent on destroying everything Light, and how she does it without fear regardless. Han, _yeah, I knew Luke_ , and how lonely he seemed, even with Chewbacca at his side. He will come back-- if not for her, fine, fine, _fine_ , but for them-- for them, she'll make him come back.

And Luke Skywalker bows his head, old and tired and weary and _broken_. He lets the saber fall from limp fingers, forcing her to fumble to catch it, and walks away, towards the path she climbed to get here. “I'm... so sorry.”

Something old and terrible rears up inside of her, that desperate, hurting hope-- it's too much to put a name to, the ache in her chest and the bitter-anger-pain, and why her vision is going blurry, her eyes burning---

Rey swings the quarterstaff in her hands, and her father collapses, limp, to the ground.

* * *

She packs a bag for him, Luke's unconscious body floating in the air behind her on a cushion of air; she takes the clothes that she can find, and the few personal items scattered around. There aren't many-- what he brought with him was what he could fit in an old, old shuttle, and she sees it submerged underneath the rolling waves as she treks back to the structures she saw on her way up. There's a holo shoved into the back of a drawer, coated in dust, and when she thumbs the activation switch, she sees a man and a woman and a toddler in the man's arms, and she recognizes none of them.

It flickers back off, whizzing past to bury itself underneath all the clothes she's shoved into a rucksack, and she scrubs away the moisture pricking at her eyes and presses on.

* * *

“Leia? What is it? What's wrong?”

Han's voice sounds as though it is coming from a long way away, but all Leia can do is lean heavily on the console next to her, surprised to feel the tears dripping off her cheeks. She hasn't cried in... a long time. A very long time. Her tears help no one, after all.

“It's Rey,” she whispers, feeling a distant, painful sorrow as though it was her own.

“The kid just sent a message-- but there's a transmission delay, did something happen?”

“No. No, just...” Rey had indeed sent a message saying she was on her way back with Luke, and the relief in the air was palpable. But _this_... She shakes her head, slow, and runs her hand down her face. Crying helps nothing, no matter how she hurts. “I don't think it went the way she thought it would.”

* * *

The trip through hyperspace is long. Rey sits in the cockpit with her feet propped up on the dash the whole way back, resolutely ignoring the sinkhole in the Force. She teeters on the edge, and it threatens to swallow her whole, just like him-- she's exhausted, and hurting, but to cry is a waste of water.

When she brings the craft out of hyperspace, but before starting the landing sequence, she gets up and leaves the cockpit. Her father is awake, now, sitting with his head turned slightly away, and she can see the side of his face starting to bruise, the blood dried in his hair. When she speaks, and he turns to look at her, his eyes are still empty, tired-- oh, but her Papa was never so tired.

_Come back!_

“We'll be landing in twenty minutes,” she tells him.

“...You hit me in the head,” he finally answers, which isn't the answer she wants, and yet-- she doesn't know how she would react, if he said anything else. Doesn't know what it is she wants to hear, or if there's anything she _could_ hear that would fix this breach between them.

There's nothing that can undo the past.

“You were being an ass,” she states flatly, but her gaze lingers on the bruise and the blood.

Kylo Ren would have killed his father.

“...Here.”

She reaches out. Luke goes still, not like he expects another blow, but wary of what she might do, unsure of her intentions-- but he makes no move to stop her, either. Her fingers brush against his temple, discolored skin hot and inflamed, and she lets the Force slip through her like sand spilling out of an overturned palm. The bruising fades; dried blood flakes away like it was never there; split skin closes shut, no scar left behind.

He stares, like he's never seen anything like her before, and Rey turns and leaves for the cockpit before her heart well and truly breaks.

* * *

She walks straight past Leia, and Han, and Chewbacca immediately after she steps off the ship, and her footsteps take her through most of the base and to one of the training rooms-- empty, conveniently, which is good.

Time all blurs together, and there is nothing but the impact of her fists against the punching bag and the hum of lights and generators and the memories rearing up from where she has tried and tried to push them away, tried not to think about them at all.

 _Thud_.

“ _Rey... the family staying here is dead.”_

_Thud._

Long nights of hunger, never enough water, burning sunlight--

_Thud-thud._

\--the raging sandstorms just a few durasteel plates away and the inside of her Walker covered in tallies for every day she spent alone----

 _Thud_.

_**Come back!** _

_Thud._

\--and he had left her there, he had left her and never come back--

 _Thud_.

\---blood, a thin line of crimson down the golden dunes and the sun burning, burning down------

_Thud-thudthudthud----_

“Rey.”

Someone grabs her wrist, and she whirls to lash out, but her other wrist is caught, too-- and it's only Finn, looking concerned, and a little bit scared, and her face is slick with sweat or tears or both, and her hands are red, all the knuckles split. Her bad leg buckles; she lets him catch her, hold her, her face against is chest, and-- Poe? The smell of grease and engine oil, familiar, and another pair of arms to hold her upright.

“Hey. Hey, easy, now. Easy, now.”

“I counted the days,” she finally gasps, voice cracking. “I waited. I _waited_.”

“I know,” Finn murmurs.

“He-- wouldn't. Refused. Not-- not for me. Not for _Leia_.”

“You got him to come back,” Poe says gently, and she tries to laugh, but it comes out as something twisted and tired and strained.

“Knocked him out. Brought him to-- to the ship.”

“You-- right. Okay.” He pulls back, just a little bit, and Finn helps her get her feet underneath her again; she raises a trembling hand to her face when Finn lets go of her wrists and wipes some of the damp away. “Let's get your hands cleaned up, all right?”

“Where's--” The training room is still empty, but there's a whole world outside of it. For a moment, she feels frightened. “Where is he?”

“With Leia,” says Finn. “Left the tarmac with her and Han.”

“How-- long?”

“It's been a while. Night, now. Couple of the pilots know what it's like to need to punch things until your mind stops, and they saw you in here, so they've been keeping guard at the door. Sent for us when you didn't seem like you were gonna stop any time soon.” Poe's voice is gentle, and his hands are gentle, and he and Finn start to walk with her towards the aforementioned door, slow, mindful of her limp. It isn't often that her leg acts up like this.

“I waited.”

“I know,” Finn says again.

When they leave, the pilots are just a little down the hallway, talking amongst themselves, and not a one of them gapes or stares, just carries on as normal. Rey appreciates it. The halls are mostly empty, too. It's late.

* * *

But even when her hands are smeared with bacta salve, the sickly-sweet smell lingering unpleasantly, and she no longer feels like she's going to break apart or start crying again without warning, like her mind just won't _stop_ \-- she can't sleep. Poe and Finn are warm around her, the three of them squished into a shared bunk, and the lights are off, and she's exhausted both physically and emotionally, and she can't sleep.

In the Force, her father's presence is cold, like a wet, heavy blanket.

Papa was never so tired.

In the end, she's already made her decision before she even starts to consider it, and she crawls out of bed without waking either Poe or Finn. She takes Poe's jacket when she leaves, the smell familiar, the layered fabric heavy and _warm_ , and sets off.

Her father is sitting cross-legged on one of the balconies that jut out from the base, seemingly unbothered by the pre-dawn chill. Rey sits next to him and rests her head against the stones behind her.

“I don't hate you,” she says, not looking over to see if he's looking at her, or if he isn't. She doesn't want to know. Just wants to talk without interruption, say what she has to say. “I hate that you left. I hate what's happened to us. But I don't hate you.”

“...I meant it, when I said... I can't. I... it's hard, some days. To even get up.”

Rey has seen scavengers succumb to such, just... stopping, completely. Lying down in the sands and not moving, eyes half-shut. It isn't heat exhaustion or dehydration, but something else entirely.

“It... isn't an excuse. But. I owe you... an explanation.”

He owes her far more than that, but the explanation is a start. She hums, an acknowledgment that she's heard him; her hands clench briefly into fists, and her skin pulls painfully taught where her knuckles have scabbed over.

They sit, and watch the D'Qar sunrise.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alternatively:
> 
> There is a strange woman on Jakku.

“That's _mine_ , get _away_ from it!”

Rey spits and snarls and tries to bite at the hands holding her back, bu the Dug is a few inches taller and a few hundred pounds heavier than she is, and with a grip like iron; he's got her arms behind her back, anyway, long fingers tight enough around her wrists to bruise, so it isn't like she can _reach_ him to bite him, but her flailing kicks do nothing at all. The Dug's partner, some humanoid species she can't discern past the sand wrappings, ignores her entirely and keeps shuffling through the salvage she worked all day to get, picking out the best pieces to keep, discarding the rest carelessly behind them.

“I said those are _mine_!”

It's been a long, long week. A sandstorm raged for the first half of it, and her water reserves emptied the day before it finally died down. She's spent all of today crawling through the baking-hot innards of a Star Destroyer to get something she can trade for the rations she needs, and these-- _these_ \---

It's _her_ scrap! _Her_ salvage!

Her lips are cracked, and her throat is so dry she can hardly get her words out, and her quarterstaff is lying well out of arms reach in the sand. It twitches minutely at her words, the Force just a thought away, and for a moment...

(She knows that if she uses the Force, she will be marked as something _other_ , and on Jakku, being other is dangerous, Furthermore, information is as valuable as water, and she can't risk that kind of information getting out. If people know she's here, with the Force, she'll need to leave, but she can't leave, she has to _stay_ , in case Papa comes back – Papa will never come back, but what _if_ – but if her alternative is to die, dehydrated, and her corpse picked over for valuables?)

“Let _go_ of me,” she demands, but her voice gives out partway through, and she mouths soundlessly, and kicks at the air. The Dug laughs, breath hot against her ear; her quarterstaff starts to skid through the sand into her grasp.

Something-- explodes. Rey finds herself stumbling forwards, feet in the sand. Another explosion, then-- no, a _blaster_ , because the humanoid alien is looking down in confusion at the smoking hole in their chest, and she spins around looking for the source, and the Dug is gurgling his last just inches from her shoes.

No one has blasters on Jakku. Rey's quarterstaff flies into her grip as she faces down the person who saw the need to step in; saving people's lives doesn't come free, not here.

Another humanoid, much taller than she is; Rey is fifteen, and she expects most beings to be taller than her, but the disadvantage can mean life or death. She sways, unsteady, ignores the crowd gathering to whisper and gape and the few who have jumped in to comb over her scrap and the dead alien's pockets-- and the figure pulls away sand goggles from their face, and the hood and cowl from their head, and---

She doesn't recognize the woman. Red hair, streaked through with gray. Green eyes, lines at the corners of them, at her mouth, between her brows. Bruising around her neck, and a scar across her cheek.

“Rey,” the woman says softly. “Oh, _Rey_.”

* * *

Mara Jade Skywalker-- Mama, she supposes, but Mama is not a legend, and a legend is not her mother. Not in her memories. Mama is just Mama, and Mara Jade Skywalker is a figure out of stories told in awed whispers.

Still.

Rey leaves Nema Outpost with the intention of never ever going back, and she leaves her scrap behind her scattered in the sand. She walks next to her mother's side, and her mother gives her water to drink, so there's no need to trade it all in.

And yet, even as they walk towards her mother's ship, a sleek cruiser like nothing Rey has ever seen before in the shipyards...

“Where were you?” she asks. Her mother doesn't flinch at the question, just looks at her with regret in her eyes.

“Captured, when the Temple burned.” Her fingers brush against the cowl around her neck; it mostly hides the bruising there, but not all of it. “They had inhibitors-- collars, that block access to the Force.

Rey twitches. She can't imagine something like that.

“But your father... You were supposed to be with him. You were safe with him, I felt it.”

“He left.” Rey doesn't remember Papa, either-- Papa is someone entirely different from Luke Skywalker, no matter that the two are one in the same. “There was a stranger, and his wife. I don't know their names. They-- left. They all left.”

Her mother closes her eyes, just for a moment. The Force hangs around them like a shroud, weary.

“I won't leave you again, Rey, I can promise you that. And when I've knocked sense into your father... when we find him...”

It isn't true, Rey knows that much. Even Grandpa has to leave sometimes. But she nods, because it's a nice lie to believe for a little while, and she looks at the ship before them for a moment. Turns, to look out in the direction of the Wastelands, where her few meager belongings remain. Turns again, to look at her mother.

“I have a shelter. And things there. I want-- to get them. Before I go with you.”

And her mother smiles faintly and nods. “I'll power up the engines, and you just tell me where to go.”

* * *

When Rey wakes up from possibly the best sleep she's had in the past thirteen years, well-rested, a stomach full of decent rations and enough water to drink, and _clean_ – there's a 'fresher on board, a _real_ one – her mother's ship is humming quietly, engines cruising along at light speed, and she can feel the presence of her mother dimmed away slightly in the Force – asleep, too. She sits up, slow, pulls on a pair of socks that are too big for her feet to keep away the chill from the metal floors, climbs out of the bunk tucked into the wall with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders, and Mr. Dollie clutched in one hand, and shuffles along in stocking feet up to the cockpit.

Her mother had gone very still when Rey approached the Walker that had been her home for the past year or so, and more still when she had followed her inside and seen all the marks etched into the walls, her presence in the Force broiling with _something_ – but she had forced a smile onto her face seeing Rey gather up her few supplies, and she had talked in lighthearted, gentle words about when they had made her doll together. Rey doesn't really remember what she's talking about, just that Mr. Dollie had always been there, but she had smiled back a little bit, and her mother seemed happy about it.

She slips into the cockpit and studies the controls. This is a strange, strange ship, like no design she's ever seen before on Jakku, but a ship is a ship is a ship. Some things remain the same. Rey sits in the pilot's seat, her feet just brushing the floor as she swivels around a bit, and studies the navpanel – forty minutes to their destination. She stares out into the swirling blue stars and waits as the chrono ticks down; her mother said that they're traveling to the Resistance, and her aunt. Leia Organa. From there...

“Do you know how to fly?”

She startles; the countdown reads twelve minutes and change. She blinks and can still see the stars, even as she swivels the chair about with little scoots of her feet on the floor to look up at her mother.

“Sort of. Never done it, but I know how ships work.”

And her mother sits down in the copilot's chair and gestures to the console. “What's the first step?” she asks.

 _You're in hyperspace,_ Grandpa says from nowhere and everywhere, his voice warm, gentle, as her mind temporarily blanks. She's on a ship with her mother. _Can't land from hyperspace..._

“Disengage the hyperdrive.”

She doesn't need to force a smile, now, as she rattles off the checklist for landing, and her eyes go even wider when they break through the marble atmosphere of D’Qar and there is nothing but green underneath a blue blue sky.

Her mother watches her. Quietly: “This reminds me of Yavin.”

“...I didn’t know there was this much green in the whole galaxy.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me, @ myself: write!! more!! mara jade!!!!!  
> myself, @ me: we have!! _three!!!!!_ ongoing series!!!!
> 
> I swear I'm not leaving anything over here unfinished without very good reason, even if it takes ages to get back to it, but, like..... why do I have so many projects. There's too much to write. Too many ideas. _Too little time._
> 
> For more of me, trying to write, you can find me on Tumblr @floraobsidian. And, as always, I hope you enjoyed the chapter! Comments and kudos are ever-appreciated.


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